More than $60 billion has been spent by the Pentagon providing arms to the Afghan National Defense and Security Force (ANDSF), according to a review by a government watchdog.
Mandated by the 2017 defense policy bill, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) catalogued all the military hardware provided to Afghan police and defense forces since America’s longest running war began back in 2002.
The GAO’s findings offer the most detailed glimpse yet into the armaments of the Afghan military.
In total, Afghan security forces have received more than 884,000 units of equipment–communication devices, trucks, guns and aircraft, among others.
The bulk of those units are handheld weapons, including rifles, pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, and mortars. Data, for example, shows that more than 358,000 M-16s, M-4s, AK-47s, and sniper rifles have been supplied to the ANDSF.
Afghan soldiers are also dependent on US-provided military vehicles, receiving more than 42,600 light tactical vehicles such as Ford Ranger pickups and cargo trucks. Afghan troops also have more than 22,100 Humvees, and thousands of other wheeled or tracked vehicles like MRAPs and armored personnel carriers.
In total, the ANDSF utilizes more than 200 US-funded aircraft. That includes 110 helicopters, 60 cargo planes, 20 light attacks planes, and 18 reconnaissance jets. The forces also have 8 unmanned drones and six surveillance balloons. The aircraft makeup nearly two-thirds of all spending on the ANDSF.
Since 2002, Congress has appropriated more than $76 billion to support Afghans security forces. The GAO reported that as of April 2017, $61 billion has been disbursed through the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund, which purchases most of the police and military equipment.
The peak of transfers occurred in 2007, when $3.7 billion worth of arms were provided to security forces. Numbers have swelled and dissipated in the years since, but there’s been an overall significant decline recently, with only a half-billion dollars in weapon purchases for the ANDSF in 2016.
Despite access to billions of dollars in heavy military equipment, the Afghan security forces are beset by casualties and corruption. Ongoing clashes with Taliban forces in just the first half of this year have killed 2,531 Afghan cops and soldiers, and wounded 4,238 others. A similar casualty rate in 2014 was described as “not sustainable” by Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, a senior commander for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Despite that, according to the latest reporting from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), police and military added more than 16,000 units in 2016, bringing its force size to 336,042.
A good chunk of that number, however–more than 12,000 individuals–are what SIGAR describes as “ghost” soldiers, described as service members in name only that allow someone else to draw their salary.
